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Robert Spence: 'A public person with a private reserve'

Steve Pokin, News-Leader 6:47 a.m. CDT April 27, 2014

David Krstuvski, 22, a senior at Evangel University talks with retiring Evangel President Bob Spence and his wife Anne Spence as they met students in the Crusader Hall cafeteria on Tuesday, April 22, 2014. (Photo: Nathan Papes/News-Leader)

Deborah Tadesse, 22, a senior at Evangel University has her photo taken with retiring Evangel President Bob Spence and his wife Anne Spence as they met students in the Crusader Hall cafeteria on Tuesday, April 22, 2014. (Photo: Nathan Papes/News-Leader)

Evangel President Bob Spence and his wife Anne Spence talk with EU Food Services Director Todd Lanning as they sat down with cafeteria employees for lunch on Tuesday, April 22, 2014. (Photo: Nathan Papes/News-Leader)

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David Krstuvski, 22, a senior at Evangel University, talks with retiring Evangel President Robert Spence and his wife, Anne Spence, as they met students in the Crusader Hall cafeteria on Tuesday.
(Photo:
Nathan Papes/News-Leader
)

He stands with Bible in hand in the chapel that bears his name and without notes preaches the word of God. Robert H. Spence, 78, hoists that Bible over his 6-foot-2 frame with the moral authority of Moses coming down with the Commandments. Spence is in his trademark suit and tie. His commanding voice carries a trace of the South — like the oak that makes its way into the bourbon. He was born and raised in Alabama and has pastored four churches.

The sentences rise and fall to convince you without doubt that the story of old Lot, whose wife a long time ago looked back and turned to salt, has relevance today.

Think of it this way, the preacher says: Lot made one bad decision after another.

Spence asks this of the couple of hundred college students who sit on the plush chapel seats in Evangel University's chapel. Many will graduate next month.

They do not fidget during his sermon, Spence's final one as president. They do not whisper. They do not doze. And miracle of miracles, they do not check their phones.

"Just remember," he says, "decisions determine destiny."

Robert Spence, Evangel president for 40 years, will retire April 30. On Thursday night, April 24, he and his wife, Anne, were honored. En route to the big event in the cafeteria, they were cheered by students and led by marching band members.

Spence retires April 30 after 40 years as Evangel's president. He estimates Wednesday's sermon was his 750th at Evangel.

"When he speaks, a lot of times he says exactly what I want to hear that day," says Jessica Dow, a 22-year-old senior from Mountain View. "I even love watching him preach because I want to be a minister myself. I see him up there with his Bible and no notes. I am definitely inspired."

It is hard to believe, but Spence was nervous before he preached Wednesday. He has been nervous every time he has ever preached in his life.

"When you are about to step up in front of hundreds of people with the opportunity to make a presentation from the word of God — that is an awesome task," he says. "It is a humbling experience for me. I would like to think that with the Lord's help something can be said that people will remember."

Spence is one of the longest-serving college presidents in the nation. A list of the boards and committees he has ever served on — in communities and within the Assemblies of God — would be as long as a novella.

For example, Spence served on the CoxHealth Board of Directors 35 years, says Steve Edwards, CoxHealth's president.

"He added this deliberative, contemplative perspective to our discussions," Edwards said. "He made the dialogue richer. He added a grounding in ethics.

"Behind the scenes in this community, there are two or three people that have their fingerprint on everything that is good that has happened in the county, and Robert Spence is one of those people," Edwards said.

Spence talks in a quiet voice, but when he speaks the Assemblies of God listens, says George O. Wood, general superintendent.

His legacy is more than the physical transformation of Evangel from the barracks of the former O'Reilly Medical Hospital into a modern campus, and the fundraising Spence did to make it happen, Wood says.

Spence demanded that the new administration building, Riggs Hall, would be the last to go up, Wood says; it was students first. It wasn't until 2009 that Spence moved from his barracks office into new space.

According to Wood, Spence's greatest accomplishment has been his connection with students and the transformation of their lives.

"At 78 years of age he can connect with people who are 18 years old, which is not often the case," Wood says.

"He is a public person with a private reserve."

Greatest of griefs

Anne and Robert Spence forever hold tight the memories of their first two children: Jennifer Lynne, who died three days after she was born in 1960; and Thomas Joseph, born in 1962, who died at age 5 during open-heart surgery.

When Jennifer Lynne died, Spence was starting as a young pastor at a church in Tuscaloosa, Ala.

The baby was born with a defect: a narrowed esophagus that made it impossible to eat.

"My wife and I were really seeking to do God's work, helping people, helping establish a church," he says. "I could not help but wonder, 'Why is this happening to us?' "

They were with their son Tommy when doctors came to take the boy into surgery.

"He told us, 'I love you Mommy. I love you Daddy. But I love Jesus more,' " says Anne Spence. To this day, she draws great comfort from her son's words.

By then, Spence was pastor of a large church in Mobile. The congregation loved their pastor's young son. They prayed for him. Some fasted.

The surgery was to fix a hole in his heart. The boy survived the first cardiac arrest but not the second.

Robert Spence cannot answer why God took his children.

But through faith he has the assurance that they are in paradise with the God he worships.

Spence quotes from King David of the Bible, who lost a son.

"I can't bring him back to me. But I can go where he is."

Says Anne Spence, "We are confident that they are in heaven. Someday we are going to be reunited. That does not mean that we did not hurt.

"There were times when I was home alone and I remember like it was yesterday falling on my knees for God's guidance and support and direction," she says. "I was afraid to have another child."

When Thomas died, they already had another child, Jonathan, who was a year younger.

Today, he is 49, lives in Nixa and is Evangel's director of undergraduate leadership studies.

Their next son, David, 44, lives in Charlotte, N.C., where he works for Bank of America.

Their third son, Steve, 42, lives in Oshkosh, Wis.

In the second day of Steve's life, doctors detected a heart murmur. He was born with the same defect as Thomas. But at 6 months, his heart healed on its own, without surgery.

There are times, Spence says, when he counsels those in grief. If appropriate, he will share his own grief but will never presume that all grief comes in the same size, shape and suffering.

'I know it can be done'

Robert Spence's father was superintendent for the Assemblies of God for the state of Alabama.

"He himself had very high standards for behavior," Spence says. "How to conduct yourself. How to behave in public. Good manners."

Before Anne Tindol had ever met Robert Spence, she had met his father, who had visited her family in his role as superintendent.

Anne and Robert knew of each other before they had ever spoken a word to one another.

"I knew I was going to marry her before I ever met her," Spence says.

He was strikingly handsome, Anne says, and a man of morals and integrity.

Jim Williams worked with Spence 34 years as vice president for institutional advancement before retiring Dec. 31.

"We don't like the word 'boss,' " Williams says. "He was a great leader, a man of vision. What he says, he does. And he doesn't say it unless he intends to have it accomplished."

Steve Spence, the youngest son, on Tuesday becomes an ordained minister in the Assemblies of God. He and his wife Sandi will be co-pastors of a start-up church in Neenah, Wis.

He says there is little difference between his father in public and his father in private.

"What he lived in public, on the pulpit, on the platform, is exactly what we saw at home," he says. "That is one of my inner strengths and one of the expectations I have for all the leaders in my life. Because I know it can be done."